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9 thoughts on “Kickstart – November 23”

From basic economics, if self-driving busses and trucks are cheaper to operate than drivers, then yes we will lose the jobs previously held by drivers. But the money saved will go somewhere, generally back into our hands in the form of reduced fares/taxes or increased services and cheaper groceries and goods. Better or cheaper transit can allow more people to enter the job market as barriers are dropped. Cheaper food can enable people to buy more or healthier food. And this is all without touching upon the possibility that driverless trucks and busses can save lives by reducing crashes.

The more skeptical might question whether the cost savings will be passed down equitably. I think this is fair. Again from basic economics, if transit and trucking changes lead to a big increase in profits which are hoarded at the top rather than being passed down, then it should lead to an increase in the level of investment and competition as wealthy investors look for the best places to earn returns. That increased competition and investment should lead to the profit margins getting reduced so they match the market average over a few years unless there are political barriers to entry. And ultimately it would be these barriers which would be the problem, just as we’ve seen with the growing income and wealth divides.

What happens to the workers that are displaced? In the short term, the people that are profiting from the status quo will be disrupted. The same thing happened when Japanese car companies started competing with US companies. The direct impact was that the quality of cars improved dramatically and the cost of ownership dropped which improved the lives of millions of people. New workers were hired by the new car companies even as other workers were laid off. When we look at driverless vehicles, we should expect a lot of people to be employed producing, developing, deploying and maintaining the new technology. We should also see the cities changing in new and unexpected ways as transportation which was previously difficult to access becomes easier, which sounds mushy but I think it could have huge impacts.

The aggressive driving issue is so easily solved. Self driving cars will be loaded with sensors and cameras. They need only photograph offending drivers and upload them to traffic control/enforcement. No different than photo radar. Maybe not politically expedient at first, but once there’s a critical mass of AVs there would be pressure to tame the aggressive humans.

I heard this music before, in the 1970s that we’d all be replaced by robots “soon”, that speech recognition will eliminate secretaries and typing, and that AI will replace low level office workers. All grossly excaggerated. Yes we will see more AV features, gradually, in time, as it costs money and a ready regulatory apparatus that takes years to form. We don’t even have common sense Uber. So the driverless future is far far off, and will come gradually. As always having skills helps. Maybe our immigration policies need to adjust ?

“Fifty years later, as a result of changing technology and cost-cutting, assistants are disappearing from corporate life, along with their cousins, executive assistants, office managers, and clerks. “There’s absolutely no question that fewer people have secretaries now,” says Pat Cook, a corporate recruiter who places executives at blue chip companies.”

As for work. There is soooo much unskilled work that needs to be done. This planet is a mess. As fossil fuels fall out of favour just begin to imagine the amount of cleanup that needs to be done: Restoring the boreal forests of northern Alberta, dismantling pipelines and oil well infrastructure, capping abandoned wells and decommissioning roads.

The are shore lines to clean up and ocean gyres to mine of plastic.

There are old mine sites to restore. And has anybody been on the Gulf Islands and seen all the abandoned cars/barbeques/appliances that could be gathered and recycled? A microcosm of a vast problem.

There are fish habitats to restore and forest to replant.

There will be abandoned suburban developments and ghost malls to tear down.

Organic farming is more labour intensive and there should be much more of it.

We’ll never run out of work. The trick is to get the people/corporations who cause the damage to pay for it. I’m more concerned that the fossil fuel industries will charge forward into insolvency and leave taxpayers to clean up their mess.

You raise a valid point. It is not only the fossil fuel industry. Almost every product is dumped at some point and the disposal and environmental damage (or life cycle) costs are not costed into the product, be it a car, an iPhone, a plastic bucket, a candle, a condo or my favourite of ow price to maximum damage ratio: the chewing gum !

You bet there’s going to be a problem, Gordon, and unemployment had been mentioned for the last two or three years by most commentators on autonomous vehicles. It’s obvious that the AV will be extremely disruptive and few are ignoring it. Much of it will be positive and some negative.

And it is government’s job to intervene to try to forecast the impacts and minimize them, though at this point so little known it will be tough to do.